Dedicated Servers / VPS Company StartUp - I could use your input.

[codexaero]

I am planning on creating a Web Hosting Start up company (in EU for now) and I am interested in what would it take for people to jump ship from their current hosting, to join another. I can create all sorts of plans but I am curious to what the people want for specs, prices, etc. I am going to be doing it on the lines of BuildBoxes (for developers), Dedicated Boxes, VPSs, Regular Web Hosting (space), etc.

I know, vague question, but I have to start somewhere. Any input is appreciated and am going to try and beat every possible price I can if it's feasible.

Thanks for your time.

cX

 

[Almenocinque]

I can only give suggestions for Regular Web Hosting (because I have never needed or used a VPS), I would change my current hosting company if somebody would give me a plan of let's say 25gb storage 150gb traffic, domain privacy included on the package, the default stuff (cpanel with softaculous/fantastico etc.) at a price of $7-$8 per month. What you should really focus on though in the beginning is building a reputation for your hosting company and try to acquire some good reviews on web hosting forums.

P.S. Also giving coupons helps sell a bit more.

 

[codexaero]

Thanks for the feedback I'll look into this.

 

[SharkServers]

Not the usual me who helps the competition, but here's what we do. We offer free site migration and free SSL certificate or domain name on annual orders. However, according to what we hear from our customers - they really love the support we provide for them when they need it. We don't use any canned messages - everything is hand typed by someone from the support team, and people seem to appreciate it.

 

[codexaero]

Not the usual me who helps the competition, but here's what we do. We offer free site migration and free SSL certificate or domain name on annual orders. However, according to what we hear from our customers - they really love the support we provide for them when they need it. We don't use any canned messages - everything is hand typed by someone from the support team, and people seem to appreciate it.

Thanks for the tip. I checked out your site and it seems pretty clean cut. The WHM method with CPanel seems to be the way to go, but I was curious to how the licensing works with WHM and CPanel. From what I have researched, I can get a Dedicated Server License for $45.00 / mo, which definitely will get forwarded to the users of the dedi, but I am not sure how I should forward it? I have seen some people have Cpanel access, but it costs an extra $5.00 to $15.00 bucks per shared server account. Is that how I should compensate for the $45.00 dedi license charge.. just divvy it up among the users of the VPS? Also there is a $20 VPS license fee? Is that the one I should be purchasing for each VPS and then forward that along to the user? I can't find any documentation on it that makes any sense to me even from what is provided here: http cpanel.net / plans-pricing /

 

[Paranoid Android]

better bandwidth for lower price maybe?

 

[codexaero]

better bandwidth for lower price maybe?

Yeah I wouldn't go lower than a 1 Gigabit Port.

 

[SharkServers]

Resellers sell cPanel cheaper than that. buycPanel.com offers VPS licenses at $14.95/mo and dedi licenses at $34.95/mo. Price goes down when you're ordering more licenses. Another option, which most of the providers probably use, is to apply for the cPanel reseller program yourself - I'm sure you'd get a nice discount.

Thanks for the tip. I checked out your site and it seems pretty clean cut. The WHM method with CPanel seems to be the way to go, but I was curious to how the licensing works with WHM and CPanel. From what I have researched, I can get a Dedicated Server License for $45.00 / mo, which definitely will get forwarded to the users of the dedi, but I am not sure how I should forward it? I have seen some people have Cpanel access, but it costs an extra $5.00 to $15.00 bucks per shared server account. Is that how I should compensate for the $45.00 dedi license charge.. just divvy it up among the users of the VPS? Also there is a $20 VPS license fee? Is that the one I should be purchasing for each VPS and then forward that along to the user? I can't find any documentation on it that makes any sense to me even from what is provided here: http cpanel.net / plans-pricing /

 

[gatra]

1.) TOP NOTCH SUPPORT. Not some eastern-europe guy sitting somewhere copying texts. No. Good staff for "normal" support questions. Have a support ticket which comes from the technical part? Cut out the support agent and forward it to a Dev. - no excuses.
2.) TOP NOTCH DEVS/ADMINISTRATORS. They need to know what they are doing.
3.) current hardware
4.) Bandwith limits? No!
5.) Don't pre-install shit on the VPS and Dedi images. If I want to rent a Dedi or vps and see you include some management software out-of-the-box and no clean standard debian image i won't be your customer. (Not sure why someone who thinks is able to manage a dedi or vps needs a management panel anyways but whatever, can be offered as an option).
6.) No support on the weekend or emergency hotline? Scratch that. If the server is not reachable and it's 0:00 on Jan. first, i want to reach at least a tech guy on an emergency hotline.
7.) reasonable prices: If you overprice stuff thats bad. If you are so cheap you have to stuff a hundred vservers on your servers or need to close your company after half a year it's even worse.

 

[codexaero]

Resellers sell cPanel cheaper than that. buycPanel.com offers VPS licenses at $14.95/mo and dedi licenses at $34.95/mo. Price goes down when you're ordering more licenses. Another option, which most of the providers probably use, is to apply for the cPanel reseller program yourself - I'm sure you'd get a nice discount.

I was about 10 minutes away from buying my first one. I'll check these guys out and see what I can get. I'm sure with the reseller I am going to have to drop a huge chunk of change, but whatever works. Also, how does it work? If I am only going to have one VPS on a server, I should choose the VPS option? Or if I am to have multiple on a dedi, should I get the Dedi version? For example, I am putting together a nice VPS that I am going to be using for shared hosting. I more than likely, will put 2 additional VPS's on this box but with lower specs. Do I get the Dedi license and if so, does that allow me to use as many Cpanel's/WHM's as I want on this one physical server? Or do I get the VPS license and only use it for the shared hosting VPS and not have panels on the regular VPS's. I am a bit confused on how this works still. In all reality, I don't want to have to have Cpanels and WHMs at all, but I know if I don't, users wont have a clue on how to do half the stuff that they need to.

 

[codexaero]

1.) TOP NOTCH SUPPORT. Not some eastern-europe guy sitting somewhere copying texts. No. Good staff for "normal" support questions. Have a support ticket which comes from the technical part? Cut out the support agent and forward it to a Dev. - no excuses.

Well for now it would be me.

2.) TOP NOTCH DEVS/ADMINISTRATORS. They need to know what they are doing.

I would like to think so

3.) current hardware

Yes, I do see a lot of companies using older chipsets and stuff (ie. from '09) but they still pack quite a punch if configured properly

4.) Bandwith limits? No!

This one might be an issue. If the DATACENTER issues a bandwidth limit, I would have to impose one as well. But I would not have one under a Terabyte I wouldn't imagine.

5.) Don't pre-install shit on the VPS and Dedi images. If I want to rent a Dedi or vps and see you include some management software out-of-the-box and no clean standard debian image i won't be your customer. (Not sure why someone who thinks is able to manage a dedi or vps needs a management panel anyways but whatever, can be offered as an option).

This is confusing as well. In all reality I wouldn't want one either because it would be costing me just to have this license in effect for your account. This is something I am still trying to figure out and how it works. Some people NEED one, some people can't stand one.

6.) No support on the weekend or emergency hotline? Scratch that. If the server is not reachable and it's 0:00 on Jan. first, i want to reach at least a tech guy on an emergency hotline.

Again, these emails and calls would go directly to me.

7.) reasonable prices: If you overprice stuff thats bad. If you are so cheap you have to stuff a hundred vservers on your servers or need to close your company after half a year it's even worse.

I have seen the prices lately on VPS's and Dedi's and that is one of the reasons why I want to do this. I obviously won't set the bar too low, but in every situation (when it comes to dedi's and vps's) I would have no problem beating the prices of all the hosting companies that I have come across. The only issue I would have is the shared hosting prices. It's hard to determine how do set that up where some companies are charging 1 penny for the first month. I obviously would not do that, but then again I am not sure how I should approach it.

Example. The current shared system I am building has a dedicated 32Gigs of RAM, 4 cores, and 2.5TB of space. I would imagine (please correct me if I am wrong) that this setup SHOULD allow a Cpanel backend running with at least 10 users. And if the DC limits me I would limit them 10 users to say 1TB of bandwidth each. I would also charge them probably $10.00 a month or more, depending on how the cPanel deal is done. Now, some hosting providers say they have "unlimited" bandwidth because most people with sites aren't going to run across a TB or higher limit. I have seen this done personally, but I do not want to make a claim like that and have it bite me in the ass when one guy goes way over the limit. Its either unlimited, or not.

Does this not sound feasible? I am assuming some of the hosting providers can say whether or not this is or not. Also am I giving away too much in these specs, or am I not providing enough. There must be some formula hosts use to value a core, 1 gb of ram, and a gig of hd space... or at least something to use as a guideline.

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

 

[fatboy]

I used to have a couple of webhosting businesses years ago and my number one piece of advice is never, ever compete on price. If you think your VPS server is worth $10 then sell it for $10, don't undercut yourself to match someone else.

Think of something different to make the value of your product worth buying, aim at a certain niche of customer (look at what happened when Minecraft came out, a lot of MC hosts popped up and some made decent money - well when there weren't being DDoSsed out of existence!)

If you don't offer 24x7 support tell people, if you are a one man show don't pretend to be huge - people like honesty and some people (and this is my experience) prefer smaller companies as they get a more personalised service, not just a robotic underpaid level 1 outsourced tech getting paid pennies.

Don't do 'UNLIMITED' - there is no hope in hell you have unlimited diskspace, bandwidth, RAM etc - its just marketing BS that will bite you in the ass unless you are mega huge like GoDaddy of HostGator (but to be honest, look at those two companies, slowing circling the drain anyway......useless). Use realistic allowances, tell people why, tell people there is no unlimited in the world, honesty pays off in the end.

Do not scrimp on hardware, if you are renting dedis go with a decent company, don't pay rock bottom prices (pay peanuts, get monkies etc), if you are colo'ing, buy double the amount of kit, you know that PSU will blow at 3am one day!

Just a few things that may help you - thats before you get customers
If you want to chat feel free to get me on Skype - I am just getting ready to start again as well

 

[codexaero]

I used to have a couple of webhosting businesses years ago and my number one piece of advice is never, ever compete on price. If you think your VPS server is worth $10 then sell it for $10, don't undercut yourself to match someone else.

Think of something different to make the value of your product worth buying, aim at a certain niche of customer (look at what happened when Minecraft came out, a lot of MC hosts popped up and some made decent money - well when there weren't being DDoSsed out of existence!)

If you don't offer 24x7 support tell people, if you are a one man show don't pretend to be huge - people like honesty and some people (and this is my experience) prefer smaller companies as they get a more personalised service, not just a robotic underpaid level 1 outsourced tech getting paid pennies.

Don't do 'UNLIMITED' - there is no hope in hell you have unlimited diskspace, bandwidth, RAM etc - its just marketing BS that will bite you in the ass unless you are mega huge like GoDaddy of HostGator (but to be honest, look at those two companies, slowing circling the drain anyway......useless). Use realistic allowances, tell people why, tell people there is no unlimited in the world, honesty pays off in the end.

Do not scrimp on hardware, if you are renting dedis go with a decent company, don't pay rock bottom prices (pay peanuts, get monkies etc), if you are colo'ing, buy double the amount of kit, you know that PSU will blow at 3am one day!

Just a few things that may help you - thats before you get customers
If you want to chat feel free to get me on Skype - I am just getting ready to start again as well

Yeah I do have a niche that I am aiming for it's what gave me the idea to go for more general hosting. I sent u a PM fatboy, but I don't use skype. In regards to the $10.00 per shared account, I feel that having 1 TB of space on a 4 core box with 32Gb of RAM is worth Waaaaayyyy more than $10.00 a month per person, but it may not be if everyone runs 3-4 sql/php sites off of there accounts with a bunch of file hosting gigs. I'm also curious to how people handle backup accounts on servers without RAID setups. What do u do for daily backups when it comes to just the system stuff?

 

[fatboy]

Replie d- will try to sort Hangouts out later

Ref backups, I do a nightly dump of all accounts and ship them offsite to a backpu location (well, two actually so I have a backup of a backup). Saying that I always advised customers to take their own backups as they could not depend on the ones I take and I think thats the line the majority of hosts take.

The cPanel backups take care of the important system files I believe, will have to check, but to be honest if you have a crash and have to reinstall cPanel and the accounts there are scripts provided to rebuild the important config files.

Touch wood in my many years of hosting I never had a situation that bad!

 

[codexaero]

Replie d- will try to sort Hangouts out later

Ref backups, I do a nightly dump of all accounts and ship them offsite to a backpu location (well, two actually so I have a backup of a backup). Saying that I always advised customers to take their own backups as they could not depend on the ones I take and I think thats the line the majority of hosts take.

The cPanel backups take care of the important system files I believe, will have to check, but to be honest if you have a crash and have to reinstall cPanel and the accounts there are scripts provided to rebuild the important config files.

Touch wood in my many years of hosting I never had a situation that bad!

Sorry, Skype killed my brand new 8 core. Not sure why. When u reference backups you are referring to backups of physical virtual images themselves? How would u back up TB's of info every day?

 

[xha44a]

Hi,

I honestly don't recommend this niche. I've seen and use VPS providers that can give you a basic 512ram, 25gb storage,1tb traffic for $10/year with your own IP. It's cut throat, you need volume to compete. It seems like a waste of time unless you can put a huge twist on it. Not sure about prices in Europe though.

XH

I am planning on creating a Web Hosting Start up company (in EU for now) and I am interested in what would it take for people to jump ship from their current hosting, to join another. I can create all sorts of plans but I am curious to what the people want for specs, prices, etc. I am going to be doing it on the lines of BuildBoxes (for developers), Dedicated Boxes, VPSs, Regular Web Hosting (space), etc.

I know, vague question, but I have to start somewhere. Any input is appreciated and am going to try and beat every possible price I can if it's feasible.

Thanks for your time.

cX

 

[codexaero]

Hi,

I honestly don't recommend this niche. I've seen and use VPS providers that can give you a basic 512ram, 25gb storage,1tb traffic for $10/year with your own IP. It's cut throat, you need volume to compete. It seems like a waste of time unless you can put a huge twist on it. Not sure about prices in Europe though.

XH

Yeah for space and RAM like that, that's actually quite feasible. I trying to set up mine so even the shared users know what they are riding on for their 10 bucks a month, and hopefully I can get this affiliate system working. I am thinking that if I do shared hosting and provide the specs of the shared system as public, it would skyrocket, because I am sure that guy wont tell u what you're paying 10.00 / year for. I'm sure you get what you pay for.

 

[togerr]

Lots of useful replies already.
Just want to add that i too would like excellent support.
Nowadays with the SSL buzz, you can offer this service or its implementation as a decent package

 

[codexaero]

Lots of useful replies already.
Just want to add that i too would like excellent support.
Nowadays with the SSL buzz, you can offer this service or its implementation as a decent package

True. True. Once I get shared hosting operational (hopefully by end of today) would anyone be interested in trying it out? I am not sure how I would do the discounts on a $10.00 / mo shared server with these specs, because it's already a great deal, but I am interested in getting some people to try it out and possibly post some reviews (though I would have to make a different thread so these reviews would stick with the thread). I would really like to focus on whitehat stuff mostly as I am not into having people run half the silly scripts I see them "trying" to run everywhere else.